This takes under a minute. You need nothing but the numbers in front of you.
In Uganda, researchers ran a randomized field experiment. Communities were given report cards on their local health clinics and organized to monitor them. No new money for medicine. No new staff. Just people watching, with the results in their hands.
Here is the result, run the way the study measured it.
Step one. Start with 100. That is the index for deaths among children under five in the communities before monitoring began. The researchers counted the before state as 100 so the change can be read plainly.
Step two. One year after monitoring began, deaths among children under five in the treatment communities were 33 percent lower than in the communities without it.
Step three. Take a third off your 100. A third of 100 is 33. What is left is 67.
Done. 100 to 67. That is the whole finding: the same clinics, the same budgets, watched by the people they served, and a third fewer small children died.
The study: Martina Björkman and Jakob Svensson, "Power to the People," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2009. The link to the study stands on the page below, next to the finding.
Why this one, out of the 71 studies in the set: it is the strongest human outcome among the findings you can run yourself, and it runs on counting alone. Watching is a basic tool. It costs nothing, and it raised the floor.
This finding lives in Foundations, part of Topsoil Commons, which builds free basic tools for the needs every person has and writes its claims so a stranger can check them. Foundations holds 71 studies across 38 fields, each printed in one line with its authors, its year, and its source named. Five of them are demonstrations you can run, this one included:
https://topsoilcommons.github.io/topsoilcommons/foundations.html
If you want to check the claim rather than take it, the record is the route: the study link beside the finding, and the Commons record behind it.
https://topsoilcommons.github.io/topsoilcommons/
Run one. Then check one.
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